I mentioned previously that it seems strange to me for a series to just repeatedly run whatever is in a single race set up. Specifically, if a race has practice time, then qualify, then a race, a series will run Practice, Qualify, Race, Practice, Qualify, Race, and so on. The answer in the past was to run Practice separately. That makes perfect sense... but I was also told to run qualify separately... yet that defeats the purpose of a computer running qualify and then move into a race.
The entire point of qualify is to determine an order for the racers, either on the grid, or when they race. Why can't the computer help with this, rather than make us split up into 6 person chunks FIRST and THEN qualify and race? It seems to me that it would make a lot more sense to have practice time, then qualify ALL your racers, and then run the races based on the qualification.
I realize that I can do this by running things separately, writing things down, and then running the final races... but if I wanted to use paper I'd just be using the tower rather than a computer, am I right? ;-) Ideally, practice time could also be included in this scenario, but I'll leave it out for now, since we can just set a single race with a long-ass practice time and leave it at that.
Here's what I would like:
Set up a Series with Qualify, and then a "No Rotation" race, with 10 people racing (for example).
When the session begins, RCS64 randomly, or by alphabetical order, selects half of the racers (or 6, whichever is less) to run a qualifying race. This race is run according to whatever the single race parameters are for the Qualify session. At the end, RCS64 stores the best times for each of those people.
The next race is ANOTHER qualification session with the rest of the group. It doesn't matter how the group is split, as we're only going for best lap time to qualify everyone.
If I have 60 racers, I expect to run 10 qualifying sessions in a row. Get it? That way, I have the qualification order of all 10 (or 60) people.
When ALL the qualifying is done, RCS64 then divides the group as evenly as possible into multiple races BASED on their qualification order, starting at the bottom. I'd also like the option of a "bump up" for each heat, so the winner gets added to the group in the next race. Using my example of 10 racers, the bottom 5 would race, and then the top 5 plus the winner of the bottom 5 would race next. This gives even the lowest qualifying racer a chance at top podium. We could even provide this option to the top 2 or 3 winners of each race, until there is a final race where only the top qualifiers and the winner(s) of the previous race are racing for the final podium of the night.
At the VERY LEAST, I would like to be able to run qualify for more than 6 people (e.g. two qually races in a row), then have RCS64 split up the group according to qually placing, and run two RACES (GP, endurance) in a row.
We can talk about points and things until we're blue in the face, but the point is that running Practice-Qualify-Race-Practice-Qualify-Race-Practice-Qualify-Race-Practice-Qualify-Race-Practice-Qualify-Race- is just plain silly. It's clear that racing SSD with more than 6 people is pretty uncommon over there. ;-)
Also, qualifying doesn't really go along with rotation racing in the first place, so this doesn't need to apply to the three rotation types. IF it can, that would be good, I just don't see a need, as I don't think anyone running rotation would waste time qualifying.
